Wishes Do Come True
by Butterfly Hippie
Summary: Emily wishes she didn't have CP. Desiree overhears her wish, & grants it. Now Emily is an invisible ghost in the life of her CPless self. She watches her new self and learns some surprising things, about her friends & herself.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Music blasted from the gigantic stereo. The three teens all danced, unaware of another member of the foursome who wasn't joining in on the fun. Even Sam, normally moody and gothic, danced around to the pop-ish sort of music. Finally the music softened and the rhythmic dancing slowed. That was when Sam noticed Emily, stretched out on the couch, her nose, as usual, buried behind a book.

"Em, come on, dance with us!" Emily raised her hazel eyes slightly from the pages of the book she was reading: Small Steps, by Louis Sachar. It was the sequel to another good booth, Holes, and this one was even better because it had a character with cerebral palsy in it. And boy, could Emily relate to that. Emily herself had mild cerebral palsy, as a result of loss of oxygen at birth. Cerebral palsy is a disability where there is some sort of brain damage that results in malfunctioned muscles; in Emily's case, too tight muscles. Cerebral palsy affected everything Emily did: her balance, her speech, even her eyes. It also caused something called a startle reflex, which caused Emily to jump a lot more than most people when she was startled. She walked unaided most of the time, but for long excursions she used one forearm crutch. Her crutch was now lying neatly parallel to the couch

"Guys, come on, you know I can't dance." Emily protested. Danny sat down by Emily's feet, making a muffled sort of THWUMP noise.

"So what? I can't dance, either, but that doesn't stop me from trying. And it provides a good laugh for everyone, too." Sam and Tucker giggled.

"_It's not the same!_" Emily shouted in frustration. "_You _don't have a physical condition that _stops_ you from dancing; you just inherited the bad dancing gene from your father." She giggled only a little as she thought of big Jack Fenton trying desperately to dance to disco music and not look like a complete idiot. "_I_ physically _can't_ dance." At this point, Sam joined Danny and Emily on the couch. Tucker followed suit.

"Since when has the word _can't_ been in your vocabulary?" Sam questioned. Emily sighed.

"Since about 8:00 this morning." Danny gave a sympathetic sigh.

"The popular kids, again, huh?" Ever since Emily had transferred to Casper High at the beginning of the year, she had been routinely harassed by the popular kids for being handicapped. Paulina took great fun in pointing out how she was perfect, while Emily was nowhere near, and Dash had developed a daily routine of knocking Emily down, which wasn't all that hard with her bad balance, and then stuffing her in a locker. The only good thing about Casper High at the moment for Emily was that her three best friends were there.

Emily nodded. "Yup. Paulina was demonstrating her new cheerleading moves right in my face, and then she was like all sarcastically, 'Oh, Emily, _you_ should try out for the squad. Oh yeah, that's right, you can't, 'cause you're a _cripple_.' And all her popular cronies laughed so hard and I was soo upset. I was crying in the bathroom for like fifteen minutes before I regained enough cool to actually go to class."

"I'm gonna kill Paulina for that..." Danny growled, his normally blue eyes glowing green. Sam grabbed his arm before he could do anything though.

"Danny, stop! Remember what happened the last time you used your ghost powers against the popular kids?" Danny stopped and considered for a moment.

"Yeah, you're right. I don't want another Poindexter situation on my hands." Suddenly a loud beep made Emily jumped. She looked over at Tucker. A small light on his PDA was blinking, and a message was scrolling across the screen.

"It's Crystal!" Tucker exclaimed, referring to the latest girl he had asked out and been denied a date. Apparently, this one had changed her mind.

"She wants me to meet her at the ice-skating rink-now!" he continued excitedly. Without further ado, he leaped off the couch and headed for the door.

"I gotta see this." Danny said in an undertone to the girls, and he and Sam followed Tucker out the door, leaving Emily on the couch by herself.

"But I can't-" Emily started, but no one was listening to her. With a resigned sigh, she picked up her crutch and started after her friends.

At the skating rink, everyone was on the ice, except Emily. Tucker skated who Crystal, who appeared very interested in his various PDAs, and Sam and Danny skated together. Emily sat by the side of the ice, surrounded by a mound of coats and purses. She watched with growing frustration as kids even younger than her skated around the rink with ease, some even doing spins and jumps. Her unease grew as Star skated towards her.

"Hey, Emily, why aren't you skating?" she asked sarcastically. "Hmm...oh yeah, because you're a stupid _cripple_!"

"Ahhhhh!" Emily let out a scream of rage, more animal-like than human. Having CP ruined her whole life, she thought bitterly. If she didn't have CP, she wouldn't be continually harassed, she wouldn't have muscle cramps, she wouldn't have bad balance and four surgeries in her fourteen years. She would just be a regular kid. Like everyone else.

"I wish I didn't have CP!" Emily screamed impulsively through thick tears blinding her. Everyone was looking at her, but at this point she didn't really care. Unbeknownst to her, Desiree, the wishing ghost, was lurking the rafters. Desiree smiled in glee when she heard Emily's frustrated wish.

"This one will be _great_." she said softly to herself in delight. Suddenly, her voice rang out through the ice-skating rink.

"So you have wished it, SO SHALL IT BE!" There was a blinding flash of light...and then there was nothing.

A/N: A bit short, considering the seven-page chapters I've been churning out lately. But it's a good first chapter, in my opinion. I have a bit of writers block, so what do I do? Create yet another new story! Please don't kill me for not updating my other stories! ducks heavy flying objects As always, review!


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

When Emily awoke, she was in a closet. A supply closet, to be more precise. She yawned and stretched her spastic limbs. Unfortunately, there wasn't much space in the cramped closet, and her stretching made quite a bit of noise as her arms and legs crashed into various mops and buckets. Fearfully silent, she waited for someone to discover the source of all the noise. But no one came. Finally, Emily got up the courage to peek out the small window in the closet door. What she saw amazed her.

There was _her_, walking in the halls-but wait, it couldn't be her...could it? The Emily Link walking in the hall had no crutch, and a long, confident stride, nothing like the limping, tripping walk the _real_ Emily had. The Emily out in the hallway was a little bit taller, and had much longer hair. But most stunning of all, the Emily in the hallway was walking with Star and Paulina, laughing and talking like they were old friends.

"What the hell _happened_?" wondered the Emily in the supply closet. Her question was almost immediately answered by a beautiful, slim ghost with long black hair gliding through the wall and coming to rest next to Emily, floating a few inches above the dirty and slimy floor of the supply closet.

"Desiree!" Emily exclaimed, surprised and a bit suspicious, but not alarmed. Emily was used to ghosts. Not only was her best friend Danny half ghost-or a "halfa" as they sometimes called them, but _she _was half-ghost, too, and apparently had been since birth. She had figured out that she had ghost powers, but had trouble controlling them because of her disability. Then she met Danny and he taught her to have more control over her powers, and he made her special ghost crutches with voice-activated ghost powers built into the crutches. Emily used at least one of the ghost crutches most of the time. After all, you never knew when a ghost could show up. Like now, for instance.

"Why did you grant my wish? I didn't really mean it." Emily questioned, for she had put together the pieces of the puzzle by now. Desiree was the wishing ghost, and she went around granting people's wishes. Even, apparently, wishes that people didn't exactly mean to have granted...

Desiree shrugged. "I'm the wishing ghost. I heard your wish, I granted it." But something about the evil smile on Desiree's glowing face made Emily suspicious about the ghost's motives. But she was too worried and preoccupied to really dwell on it at the moment.

"So, I can just wish that I had CP again and you'll grant it?" Desiree smirked. There was something definitely evil about that smile.

"It doesn't exactly work that way." Emily arched her eyebrows, but couldn't hold the facial expression for very long. Her eyebrows returned to normal height.

"There's some things I want you to learn about your able-bodied self before you go back to the way things were." And without another word, Desiree took off through the wall again.

"Wait! Stop! _I wasn't finished!_" Emily yelled in anger and frustration. _Try it. What have you got to lose?_ whispered a small voice in her head. For once, Emily actually listened to it.

"I wish...I had CP again?" she said tentatively, so that it came out more like a question than a statement. Nothing happened, and her foot was starting to fall asleep from being in the same cramped position for so long. Slowly, she used the doorknob as a lever to pull herself upright. Then, carefully, she turned the doorknob, and winced at the creaking sound it made. She glanced around for her crutch, and then realized that it wasn't there.

"Apparently Miss Desiree forgot to bring my crutch. Thanks a lot." Emily muttered sarcastically. Oh well. She'd have to make do. She was so wrapped up in her thoughts that she crashed right into a nearby group of lockers, and had to cling to the locker handles to keep her balance. This wasn't unusual for Emily, but this time she panicked. How would she explain herself? How could she explain that she had gotten there by a wish? But no one seemed to notice. Everyone just walked passed her without a glance.

"Everyone would have noticed a crash of that magnitude. I know from experience." Emily said to herself. So that meant either everyone in this wish was deaf or more probably...

"I'm invisible!" Emily said as the realization hit her. Nobody could see her, nobody could hear her. She was totally free to do whatever she wanted. And what she wanted rounded a corner and was heading towards her.

Danny Fenton and Tucker Foley were laughing and talking as they headed towards her. Danny looked cute as ever in his usual red and white t-shirt. Tucker was prodding the screen of his PDA with a tiny stylus. This, at least, was as it should be, and it gave Emily a small bit of comfort to witness the things that were still the same. But where was Sam? _Probably at a Veggie Lovers' meeting_. Emily decided. She trailed Tucker and Danny to Danny's locker, where he proceeded to struggle with the combination lock. When he finally won the battle and got the lock open, Emily was shocked to see his locker shrouded in black and purple, and a photo of Sam nestled in the fabric, along with a single flower.

_Something is very, very wrong here..._Emily thought in shock. She watched closely as Tucker patted Danny on the shoulder gently.

"Come on, man. She wouldn't want you to have a breakdown every time you see her picture." Danny wiped away the tears that had been forming in his bright blue eyes.

"I know." he said, his voice trembling. "But I miss her so much. But then again, I guess being dead is better than all the suffering she had to go through before..." his voice trailed off and Tucker patted him awkwardly on the shoulder again.

_Suffering? _Emily thought in bewilderment. _What...?_ But her thoughts were cut off by Tucker's voice.

"I know, man. We all know the pneumonia got the best of her. You don't have to say it." At first Emily didn't understand. But all of a sudden a stomach sinking swoop of realization hit her, and she nearly fell over again. _No_, she thought. _No, please let me be wrong. Please, I'll do anything!_ But there was no changing the logical order of facts.

Emily had met Sam when she was in the hospital for a leg operation; and Sam was in the hospital for a serious case of pneumonia. Sam had gotten even more ill while Emily was having her surgery, and had been moved to the Intensive Care Unit. The doctors were sure that Sam wasn't going to live through the night. Emily had changed all that. Not only was Emily half-ghost, but she had also been given incredible healing powers by Isabelle-the healing ghost. She had used her healing powers-which at the time had only been used once before, and failed-to save Sam's life. But now that Emliy didn't have CP, she hadn't had the leg operation last year, and so she hadn't met Tucker and Sam and Danny and she hadn't...Emily shook her head vigorously to clear it of the confusing thoughts.

"_Oh my god_." she whispered quietly. Sam Manson was dead. And, in a roundabout way, Emily was the one who had killed her.

A/N: Well, I'm updating, even though I only got ONE review! C'mon people, where are ya! But I had a blast of inspiration and you can't ignore inspiration...REVIEW! Please!


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

"_Desiree_!" Emily yelled before she even quite knew what she was doing. A second later, Desiree came through the wall, floating lazily a few inches from the ceiling.

"You called?" she asked in an evil voice, a smirk forming on her face. She knew why Emily had called. A second later, the smirk faded and she spluttered in surprise as she was pinned against the wall of lockers by one of Emily's hands, glowing with ectoplasm and shaking slightly with anger and effort. _Well, at least my ghost powers still work in this universe...world...whatever it is. _The thought didn't comfort her much. A few feet away, Tucker was still comforting Danny, still unaware of anything unusual going on.

"You foul...evil...you..." Emily growled into Desiree's ear. A minute later, she was shouting, even though she didn't realize she was doing it. Often, the CP made her have trouble controlling the volume of her voice, especially when she was angry. And that was _definitely _now. Thank god no one could hear her.

"How could you have done this to me? Do you want to torture me or something? Sam is one of my best friends! Bring her back, you hear me! _BRING HER BACK_!" Desiree looked slightly nonplussed for a minute before she regained her composure-and her smirk.

"I can't do that." Desiree said simply. Emily was so mad, she could practically feel the steam coming out of her ears. She longed to beat Desiree to a pulp, but a ghost couldn't exactly be beat up, and with her luck, Emily would be more beat up than Desiree by the end.

"Well why the hell not!" she yelled at top volume. Desiree just gave another little smirk and seemed about to say something, but was interrupted by a terrified scream coming from somewhere down the hall.

"GHOST!" Whoever had yelled had obviously spotted Desiree, flattened against a bank of lockers by an apparently invisible force. It must look pretty strange. If she hadn't been so angry and panicked, Emily _might_ have laughed. Out of the corner of her eye, Emily saw Danny, so hunched with misery a few minutes before, spring into action. He dashed into a nearby boys bathroom and a minute later flew out of it. Danny hovered a few feet above the ground, looking angrily at Desiree.

"Desiree!" he spat. Emily let go of Desiree, afraid that if she didn't let go, she would be sucked into the thermos with the meddling wish-granting ghost. She watched on with great interest, grateful that she was invisible. "What are you doing here?" Danny continued as he crossed his arms over his chest. For a minute, Emily saw a flicker of the old Danny, the old smile, the old personality. But then it was gone, and it was replaced with a hunched ball of angst and misery. This was not the Danny she knew.

"You know what, I don't care. Just get in the thermos." Danny fumbled with the top of the thermos and drew Desiree in. Far from being angry at being sucked into a thermos again, Desiree looked almost...pleased. She gave one of those mysterious smiles, the ones that never amounted to anything good. Right before she disappeared into the thermos, Desiree looked straight where Emily was standing, gave a wink and a little flick of her finger. Emily felt a strange sensation come over her as Danny capped the thermos, and then it was gone.

Suddenly, Danny seemed to spot Emily, just standing there. "What are you doing here?" he demanded angrily. "Get to class where you belong!" Emily was scared of this new Danny. She didn't know this boy. This Danny was a cold and hostile stranger to her.

"You...you can see me?" she asked in confusion. She had thought she was invisible. Why is it that whenever she was sure of something, it turned on her?

"Yeah, I can see you!" Danny yelled. "What do you think, you're invisible or something? Why are you even paying attention to a geek like me? Go hang out with the popular crowd, where you belong!" _He thinks I'm the other Emily!_ Emily realized with a sinking feeling. She moved towards him tentatively, not quite sure what she was doing.

"Please." she said, reaching out towards him feebly. Danny recoiled, and the gesture of hatred brought tears to her eyes. _The real Danny would never do that to me._ "I know your secret." she said desperately. This one sentence had a profound effect on the boy. He lowered his hand, which had been glowing with a not yet released ectoplasmic blast and stared at her in disbelief.

"You...know my secret?" This time it was Danny's turn to be confused. Emily took another tentative step towards him, and this time he didn't back away.

"Yes. I'm Emily Link-from another timeline."

A half hour later, Danny and Emily were walking along the still-empty hallway, and Emily was finishing up her story.

"So let me get this straight," began Danny. "In another universe, you have this...disease-"

"_Disability_." cut in Emily. She hated it when people mistook CP for a disease.

"-_disability_, whatever, anyway, you have this disability and you met Sam and Tucker and me when you were in the hospital for leg surgery the same time Sam had pneumonia."

"Yeah." Emily confirmed. Danny gave a small nod to assure himself of the facts and continued.

"And not only do you have ghost powers, you also have healing powers which you used to heal Sam when she was in the ICU. And the four of us became best friends-and we became sort of...boyfriend and girlfriend?" Danny ended this last sentence with a questioning tone.

"Yeah." Emily said again. Danny looked her straight in the eyes.

"Do you know how hard this is to swallow?" Emily managed a small smile.

"I can imagine." she said softly. After a long while of staring at Emily, which made her distinctly uncomfortable, Danny spoke again.

"OK, I trust you. But what do you want me to do about it?"

"Help me to get back to my own timeline." Emily answered quietly. She had to fight to hold back tears. All she wanted to do was be back in her own timeline already!

"Why should I help you?" Danny sounded distrustful again. Emily had an answer ready to that one. She stared right into his dazzling blue eyes and spoke confidently.

"Because in my timeline...Sam's still alive." Danny considered this for a long while. Finally, he seemed to come to a decision.

"OK, I'll help you. But we'll have to tell Tucker."

A/N: OK, I worked long and hard on this chapter for a friend who couldn't wait to see what happened. Please review for my hard work! Come on people, I know you're out there! Please review!


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